Help!

[MyBugsKeeper]

I've had my Wolf almost 3mos. (Before our first real freeze/snow.) But last night she made an egg sac...Wth?! Pretty sure we're not equipped for this. Confused & concerned...

 

[Stefan2209]

What kind of help do you need?

 

[aaarg]

don't be afraid! this is an exciting chance to see something a lot of people have no idea about! in a couple of weeks, she will open the egg and the adorable spiderlings will climb onto her back. they'll stay there for a week or so before they start dispersing... that is the time to start freaking out!

(jk, you can let the babies go into the frozen wilderness and fend for themselves and it's nbd... or you can raise a brood of wolf spiderlings!)

has the spider molted in your care? if so, it's def an infertile sac. it may be infertile either way. time will tell!

 

[MyBugsKeeper]

don't be afraid! this is an exciting chance to see something a lot of people have no idea about! in a couple of weeks, she will open the egg and the adorable spiderlings will climb onto her back. they'll stay there for a week or so before they start dispersing... that is the time to start freaking out!

(jk, you can let the babies go into the frozen wilderness and fend for themselves and it's nbd... or you can raise a brood of wolf spiderlings!)

has the spider molted in your care? if so, it's def an infertile sac. it may be infertile either way. time will tell!

She hasn't molted. I don't know that we have had her properly sustained long enough for her to do it safely, or...?
Is there any way to have an actual conversation about all this so I may explain more adequitly? Email? Msngr?

What kind of help do you need?

Any any all plz!

 

[Sikalisko]

Any any all plz!

Challenge accepted. Maybe I should start out by telling you that wolves are mammals. They don't lay eggs or make egg sacs.

And as such, this is definitely a wrong sub-forum for your question. You might have better luck in the "Not So Spineless Wonders" section. Maybe someone else have had similar problems with their pet wolf.

Yes, there's almost no bounds to my bad sense of humour. And since opening poster is clearly either a troll or too lazy to describe what the actual problem is, yet somehow motivated enough to start a new thread for their supposed problem (with very informative tittle too), I decided to amuse myself

 

[The Snark]

And I was getting all comfy with the mental image of a Lupus cuddling an egg sack, all eight bright yellow eyes keeping a sharp lookout.

 

[NYAN]

I've had my Wolf almost 3mos. (Before our first real freeze/snow.) But last night she made an egg sac...Wth?! Pretty sure we're not equipped for this. Confused & concerned...

It’s really no big deal. She will carry the egg sac for a few weeks. After it hatches, the babies will ride around with mom for a bit. You have about a month and a half to prepare.

Make sure there’s no holes the babies can escape through. Just keep mom happy. Offer food every couple weeks and take it out if she doesn’t want it. When they hatch, if the species is native to your area, release the babies outside. Otherwise let them cannibalize until theres a reasonable number.

 

[MyBugsKeeper]

Ok ppl... 1)NOT a troll OR lazy thank u.
2)Pretty sure her reproductive timeline doesn't add...?
3)My problem is that I'm a bug-phobic female with 3 cats-yeah, har har...glad I amuse.
4)I've come here more than anywhere else reading the forums seeking info from those who know better than most "experts" to ensure the best care for her. Not to be insulted or made a joke of.
I am an Earth Practitioner-first & foremost, so I respect this creepy little girls right to life. I am not the one that captured her. I simply agreed to help take care of her until death or Spring. As a result, I got stuck being her keeper. This is all new to me.
She is very well taken care of. I have done literally a college course worth of hours of research on aracnid husbandry to ensure her well-being. I am aware of the unique maternal nature of this genus. I'm just not understanding her timeline.
And finally, if you didn't catch it, I live in S.Dakota. We're under 2' of snow & ice right now, so I'm not about to sentence my Bug(and sac) to a frozen death. We've had her too long now for her "anti-freeze" to be appropriated.
Greatly appreciative of info/advice-not insults.

 

[aaarg]

She hasn't molted. I don't know that we have had her properly sustained long enough for her to do it safely, or...?

spiders can molt basically anywhere, anytime. i've had wolf spiders molt within 6 hours of capture.


you've gotten solid advice here, though you're being vague about what kind of advice you're looking for.
if you truly read enough to equal a college course, you should be able to communicate your concerns more appropriately.

your enclosure is a-ok. gravel is not ideal but the spider has enough structure to utilize as a hide/burrow so that's good. keep the water dish clean and full (if you're creeped out by the idea of reaching into the enclosure to grab the dish, tongs or long forceps come in handy!)
that photo looks like a Tigrosa sp. i've bred them, they're great!

spiders don't fertilize eggs until they are ready to be placed into the egg sac - females store sperm during mating, so there's no tellin' how long ago your spider had a suitor.

if it's a fertile sac you're gonna end up having to do something you probably will feel conflicted about. whether it's letting all the young cannibalize each other until you have a more manageable number of spiderlings to deal with, releasing the babies outside, etc. you could damage the sac and she'll abandon or eat it - or try to remove it and pop it in the freezer. um.

 

[Sikalisko]

Ok ppl... 1)NOT a troll OR lazy thank u.
2)Pretty sure her reproductive timeline doesn't add...?
3)My problem is that I'm a bug-phobic female with 3 cats-yeah, har har...glad I amuse.
4)I've come here more than anywhere else reading the forums seeking info from those who know better than most "experts" to ensure the best care for her. Not to be insulted or made a joke of.
I am an Earth Practitioner-first & foremost, so I respect this creepy little girls right to life. I am not the one that captured her. I simply agreed to help take care of her until death or Spring. As a result, I got stuck being her keeper. This is all new to me.
She is very well taken care of. I have done literally a college course worth of hours of research on aracnid husbandry to ensure her well-being. I am aware of the unique maternal nature of this genus. I'm just not understanding her timeline.
And finally, if you didn't catch it, I live in S.Dakota. We're under 2' of snow & ice right now, so I'm not about to sentence my Bug(and sac) to a frozen death. We've had her too long now for her "anti-freeze" to be appropriated.
Greatly appreciative of info/advice-not insults.
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I feel like I have to respond properly, now that there's at least some info available of what you actually want.

1 and 4) Depends how you define lazy. Your first few posts were really vague and it started to look like more serious replies before my joke one got no proper answers from you and you didn't even bother to type complete sentences. It started to look like you were demanding others to try to guess what kind of help you even wanted. Basing on my personal life experiences, it helps a lot not being pain in the ass if you request help from strangers, especially in the internet where people could just as well choose to ignore you. And technically you were asking "any kind of help at all" so my reply fit this criterion. Another example, if you knew as much as what genus your spider is and had already studied that much to be able to identify it, it would have been helpful to mention it in the first post, or at least in your latest.

2) I don't know much about American wolf spiders but in Europe at least some species produce two egg sacs within one summer. Since you live in a region with proper snowy winter, I assume your spider could have similar life cycle. Your spider could be out of sync now for prolonged period of warm room temperatures instead of hibernating outside. Chances are it was supposed to find a mate next spring and have its eggs then. In this case the eggs would be unfertilized. Or maybe she mated this spring and this is the late second egg sac or even extra one, now that it's living in abnormal conditions. If so, the slings should be able to overwinter if you acclimatize them by slowly adding more and more ice in a container inside their enclosure, and then replacing the water with new ice twice a day. This should keep the air temperature inside their enclosure cooler than room temperatures. After a while you could then keep the slings inside cloth covered container filled with damp leaf litter in your fridge for few weeks and finally place them outside under a large pile of dry leaf litter and then cover it with snow. The proper timing, and if this is suitable method at all, depends on what exact species of wolf spider you have. Probably not every spider's life cycle is properly studied though. Of course, I've never had to do anything like this with spiders and the closest example would be with leftover caterpillar larvae that were used in a research project.

Alternatively you could try to feed the slings with pre-killed roaches/house flies/ etc. that are cut open so that the slings are able to get to the juicy bits. Some spiders are able to scavenge already dead prey. I don't think it's doable to suddenly obtain and keep a culture of some invertebrates that are small and slow enough for the slings to hunt on their own, unless you're really dedicated to it. If you plan to keep the possible offspring at all that is. aaarg and NYAN have already suggested valid options to make the whole situation more manageable. I assume you have no problems of killing some other arthropods since you've been taking care of the mother spider and offering it something to eat.